


Like for real

by altersweetego



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10833009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altersweetego/pseuds/altersweetego
Summary: We all know, Kevin and Joaquin went really fast from "i won't tell if you won't" to being official boyfriends, and here is how it could happen.Two stories (one situation, different points of view) written before episode 10 was out.





	1. Like for real

**Author's Note:**

> Well, English still isn't my first language and I still feel like I need to warn you about this.

Joaquin isn’t ashamed to touch him in public.  
Yes, they still have to hide whatever happens between them (and, to be honest, “I won’t tell if you won’t” was totally Kevin’s idea), but they’re hiding only because the sheriff’s son and the guy from a gang isn’t the safest thing you can think about. It isn’t safe for the ‘good boy’ to mess with a criminal, and it isn’t safe for the gang member to kiss a son of a sheriff, although Kevin could argue with all this 'isn’t safe' thing.  
He feels pretty safe when Joaquin is around.  
This is not about the gun Joaquin keeps in the glove box of his bike (to be honest, him having a gun makes Kevin a little uncomfortable)… This is about the way Joaquin looks at him, or about the way Joaquin acts when he thinks Kevin’s in danger, or about the way it gets only three seconds and half of a message for him to understand if Kevin’s upset. And this is about the way he takes Kevin’s hand right in the middle of the street (in the middle of everything), when he understands that, yeah, Kevin is really upset.  
Once it happens at the street. Then it happens between the shelves of the bookshop (they are here because Joaquin is damn fond of reading). It keeps happening again and again.  
It happens in the bar they visit to deal with some of Joaquin’s business (Kevin doesn’t really want to know what exactly this busines is so he asks no question). For Kevin, it seems like everyone here is willing to kill him, but probably he’s a little overacting because everyone here is busy with their own selves and no one is even looking at him. Still, he feels out of place, his sweater with the buttoned shirt underneath like the most inappropriate thing in the world, but then Joaquin turns to him and smiles, first fixing his collar and then slowly caressing his cheek.  
Hell yes, he isn’t ashamed to touch him at all.  
It doesn’t look like anything, doesn’t feel like anything. On the hand, it makes Kevin sad to realize for everyone else touching each other in public is ordinary and simple and even natural: everyone else can afford themselves anything including kisses in buses (eww, really!) while all he had was some secret hook ups with the guys who acted like they didn’t know him for the next day. But on the other hand, he’s happy this is not something ordinary and simple. For him. For both of them.  
Right from the start there wasn't anything ordinary or simple between him and Joaquin.  
Joaquin sneaks to his room through the window, sometimes even when Kevin’s dad is at home, so it’s really cool the window is on the back side of their house so no one can catch a sight of Joaquin climbing there or a sight of them kissing right on the windowsill. Kevin always keeps the window open for Joaquin, and he would never believe if someone told him, but this serpent guy likes to make surprises. Surprise! If Kevin is out of home, Joaquin leaves ‘things’ on his desk. Usually ‘things’ are flowers, every time different, and exactly at the moment when Kevin decides he loves gerberas the most, he gets some tulips, and then some white lilies, and his head spins round, and round, and round.  
There is no way he can say what kind of flowers he loves the most.  
The only thing he can say is he’s in love with what’s happening. And he wants more. Like for real.  
“U know, there is someone, we’re dating,” he types a text for Betty and deletes it without sending.  
“His name is Joaquin,” he almost says to Veronica, right from nowhere, in the middle of conversation about how good it would be to throw another party.  
Throwing parties is great, but he wants to come with Joaquin, this is the problem.  
He wants to hold his hand, and touch his hair, and feel his shoulder against his own shoulder, and maybe even slow-dance. Like everyone else, not like a ‘sheriff’s son and gang member’.  
He does not dare to ask Joaquin if they could be something ‘normal’ or ‘real’ (to be honest, he is too afraid of the answers he may get to ask any questions at all, even if ninety-nine percents of time he’s dying of curiosity), but suddenly he asks, suprising even himself, “Do you like me?”  
It just slips from his mouth.  
Joaquin stares at him.  
He is sitting on Kevin’s desk, surrounded by flowers like the wolf in the garden, the only difference is this wolf create this garden himself, and his knuckles are bruised, and there is a terrible abrasion over his eyebrow.  
The only thing Kevin wants is to kiss it until it disappears.  
“Would I risk my ass in the other way, how do you think?” Joaquin answers on a question with another question, and somehow it sounds… vulnerable.  
Maybe, that’s because Joaquin understands this is not really an answer. There is about thousand ways to says the same thing, like would I bring you flowers, or would I hold your hand, or would I listen to the stories about your friends or celebrities I know nothing about, or would I even sit here, knowing there is your dad downstairs, sleeping after his shift?  
Well, the last one was exactly what Joaquin said.  
Kevin doesn’t want to start a fight, but he knows you can endlessly say things like that, but do they really mean something?  
He wants confirmation.  
Official would be great, with signs and stamps and everything, or at Jimmy Kimmel’s, or live from the White House and, just in case, carved in stone.  
He wants it to be so real he could touch it.  
He wants it to be real, that’s it.  
He wants it so bad it hurts him to breathe.  
“Hey, listen,” Joaquin begins, touching Kevin’s chin, and this is hot as it always is, but Kevin looks away.  
The ‘shut your mouth’ kisses are the last thing he wants, even if Joaquin’s kisses are everything.  
Joaquin’s eyes go all desperate and doomed. He looks like a wolf, right before the second a wolf lies on its belly and crawls to the new leader of a pack, but Kevin doesn’t want to be a pack leader. He wants to be the other wolf running by Joaquin’s side or even a cute little dog, escaped from his warm house... He doesn’t care until they're ‘together’.  
“Hey,” Joaquin says again, and from his face you can read the moment when he finally makes a decision: at first his features become cold, and then he relaxes. “I really like you. A lot.”  
It doesn’t sound easy, because there is nothing easy or simple between them. Just kissing or just being each other’s hook ups (despite the fact they hadn’t had sex yet, and Kevin thinks some things are worth waiting for) would be easier, but let’s face it, it was never ‘just kissing’ (and it will never be ‘just being each other’s hook ups’). It’s much bigger and that’s why they both are so scared.  
Joaquin pulls him closer, and Kevin hides his face into the silk of Joaquin’s hair, soft and fluffy, smelling of rain and a little shampoo… An ordinary smell, but it makes Kevin’s heart stop for a second.  
“Everything will be alright,” Joaquin says.  
Kevin hopes so.  
He strokes Joaquin’s shoulder, his neck, his hair. It’s just impossible not to touch him, so there is no surprise they always find themselves holding hands.  
“I like you, too,” Kevin says the next day, at the gas station. Joaquin kisses him without any hesitation, long, greedily and with such kind of hope which makes Kevin turns upside down on the inside.  
“U know, there is someone, we’re dating,” he sends Betty a text.  
“His name is Joaquin,” he says to Veronica.  
“Could your boyfriend get is into the Whyte Whyrm?” Archie asks.  
His boyfriend comes with him to the Jughead’s birthday party. Holds his hand, and lets Kevin play with his hair, and keeps their shoulders touching, and even dance with him, slow, and fast, and whatever.  
Kevin feels like he is the happiest person on Earth.  
Even if he is some kind of cute house dog, even with the collar made from Swarovski or in ridiculous dog shoes keeping his paws from the dirt, but he runs by the side of his wolf, shoulder to shoulder, and that’s what he need.  
Like for real.


	2. Answers and questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same situation, different point of view <3

Kevin tries his best to avoid asking question, and Joaquin knows him well enough to understand how much it takes.  
But yeah, Kevin doesn’t ask why is his leather jacket ripped, or where did this abrasion above his eyebrow come from, or whose face left this bruises all over his knuckles.  
What Kevin asks is, “Do you like me?”  
Joaquin chocks with the air.  
He’s in Kevin’s room, sitting here at his desk, surrounded by the flowers he brought him, still in his leather jacket, with Kevin right here by his side. Kevin is looking at his wounds, eyebrow and knuckles, as if he wants to kiss them away, and honestly that’s why Joaquin would be perfectly fine with getting wounded again and again.  
Honestly, this speaks for itself.  
So many things about two of them speak for themselves and this is what he is slightly afraid of so his answer isn’t all straight.  
“Would I risk my ass in other case, how do you think?”  
This is not really an answer, at least not the answer Kevin Keller deserves, but sometimes being a southside serpent means you can say what you want.  
Would I come to your place, leaving my bike three blocks away and hiding like a thief (which I am) and trying to find a perfect time with your father not being around? Would I climb to your window in the middle of the night just to see you, knowing your father’s downstairs? Would I text to you twenty four hours a day? Would I tell you about the book I’ve just read? Would I tell you about all the shitty things going on?  
Would I hide from FP all the things going on?  
Kevin stares at him for a few second and then looks away, his shoulders go down. He isn’t happy and making Kevin upset is the last thing Joaquin wants (despite the fact it would definitely make him upset if he knows about the task FP gave Joaquin). Well.  
“Hey,” with two fingers he lifts Kevin’s chin. “Listen—“  
Joaquin doesn’t really know what to say.  
He freezes, once again realizing how different two of them are. His scratched and bruised tan fingers on the white silk of Kevin’s skin. Kevin’s shirt and sweater matching his eyes, both so touchable and soft, and Joaquin’s sweatshirt, all holes and crimples, faded from billion laundries, under his leather jacket. Magazines and comics in Kevin’s backpack, along with text books, and the gun in Joaquin’s bag.  
Kevin’s room is nice and warm, a lot of space, tons of photos. Joaquin doesn’t really have a room and he has to keep his books in the old idle fridge, for example.  
He can go on like forever, and even if they will find a way to make this work through all shit what’s happening, sooner or later it will end anyway. For God’s sake, why would a sheriff’s son want to stuck with some kind of Southside trash who likes reading and hopes to get away from the gang but has no idea how to do it because there is not so much in common between what he reads in his books and how the real life in the poorest part of Riverdale is?  
There is an abyss between them.  
There is an abyss between them, and also FP Jones who wants Joaquin to spy on the sheriff for Southside serpents.  
_He likes me,_ Joaquin tells him. _For real._  
_He likes me_. That’s what Joaquin says, hiding the fact he likes Kevin too. For real.  
“Listen to what?” Kevin asks and Joaquin, still lost in his thoughts, flinches.  
“I don’t know,” he answers, leaning for a kiss but freezing when the abyss between them becomes less than an inch.  
This also isn’t an answer, just a way to get away from what they are talking about. That’s what people usually do: kissing and kissing and kissing instead of speaking their mind or their heart. And that’s what Kevin’s too good for. He deserves better.  
Kevin deserves all the best, but the only thing Joaquin can give him is truth.  
Or half of the truth, because Joaquin has no gut to tell him about his ‘mission’. He’s going to manage it himself. He will.  
“Listen,” he begins again, their lips touching when he speaks. “I really like you. A lot.”  
_And this is what scares me like hell._  
I really like you a lot. Don’t you get it from the way I look at you?  
Well, maybe it’s good if you don’t.  
Anyway, Kevin deserves to hear this out loud, because while things are not told… While things like these are not told, they doesn’t consider as real. What you feel but don’t tell, it exists but at the same time it doesn’t because if you keep it inside your head it cannot be touched.  
But he lets it out. Now it exists outside of his head, outside of his heart, outside of his mouth, pulsing between them, making this room brighter and brighter, and Joaquin feels like he is transparent, although he knows that he’s not.  
Completely defenseless, that’s what he is.  
_You can do whatever you want._  
Kevin puts his hands on Joaquin’s shoulders, stroking softly, rising higher and higher until his fingers reach Joaquin’s hair. He always plays with his hair and Joaquin feels like… well, like a wolf tamed without any collars and chains. Even if someday he comes back to the woods, his heart would stay here, and there is nothing he can do about this.  
There is nothing he want to do about this.  
He said it. For real.  
It terrifies him a lot.  
“Everything will be alright,” he says, bringing Kevin closer to him and finally kissing. Kevin kisses him back.  
He tries his best to avoid asking question, and Joaquin knows him well enough to understand how much it takes.  
He tries his best to avoid asking question, but if someday he asks, Joaquin would tell him everything. Why is his leather jacket ripped, or where did this abrasion above his eyebrow come from, or whose face left this bruises all over his knuckles. Anything.  
Kevin deserves the truth, and that’s what Joaquin is going to give him.  
From now on, Joaquin doesn’t care about the questions FP Jones wants him to find answers to. He doesn’t care about some other’s question, because well, he wants to ask something himself.  
Just one thing, and even if he might have already known the answer (would Kevin risk his ass in any other case?), he still wants to hear it from Kevin.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I have another story with this situation from the other side, Joaquin's POV, and I'm going to translate it, too.  
> Thank you for all the support you're giving me!


End file.
